Sources of Our 

                   Discontent

 

Travel in time with me to the 1980s when an experienced educator suggested to me that the so-called “Me Generation” of students at that time were headed for a troubled future because of their growing belief that everyone’s opinions were equally valid regardless of established facts. We have equal rights (or should), but it’s foolish to believe that we’re equally right.

Fast forward to the election year of 2016 when my wife and I witnessed a widespread denial of provable facts. We were in an Amtrak station when a fellow passenger I dubbed Alice in Wonderland was on her phone loudly explaining that the 2012 mass murder of students and teachers in Connecticut’s Sandy Hook School was a hoax perpetrated by those wanting “to take our guns.” She told her listener to check it out “on Facebook.” Clearly, we were in the presence of a conspiracist with a social media megaphone. 

We knew there were ridiculous lies lurking in dark corners of the Internet—President Obama wasn’t a citizen, climate change was a hoax, the moon landings never happened—but I hadn’t come across a True Believer before. Watching Angry Alice spread online fiction to who knows how many eventual Believers was both disturbing and sad: disturbing because we were witnessing the spread of a lie and were powerless to stop it; sad because we were seeing a human being with the priceless gift of reason twisting it without evidence to satisfy her own paranoia. Surely, she was taught the habit of critical thinking in school. Apparently, she broke the habit and was a recovering thinker. 

The distinguished essayist Christopher Hitchens called conspiracy theories “the exhaust fumes of democracy.” Smelly, useless, and poisonous.

We later learned that the Sandy Hook “hoax” was promoted by right-wing radio personality Alex Jones, who was sued for defamation by eight grieving families. Jones must pay more than $965 million in damages and has declared bankruptcy. Justice.

Fast forward again to the 2020 presidential election when the losing candidate claimed—with no evidence—that his election was “stolen.” Even though 60 of 61 courts ruled that Biden won fairly (one didn’t rule because of a legal technicality), many of the loser’s followers became True Believers in the Big Lie. Many GOP legislators who know better but are afraid of losing votes became, and remain, election deniers publicly but privately admit the election was fair. 

In his 2017 book The Death of Expertise, Tom Nichols, professor of national security at the US Naval War College and at Harvard, writes about “the emergence of a positive hostility” to established facts and expert views. “This is new in American culture, and it represents the aggressive replacement of expert views or established knowledge with the insistence that every opinion on any matter is as good as every other.” This remarkable change in our public discourse “is not only unprecedented but dangerous.… Indeed, ignorance has now become hip….” But why would anyone prefer fashionable to factual?

Some good news: schools are working to make ignorance unfashionable. An award-winning government teacher at an area high school tells me that most of his students do not believe all opinions to be equally valid and that by the time they graduate, most “are at least decent at understanding credibility of sources and recognizing more reliable versus less reliable information.”

He said that challenges include competition from social media for students’ attention, lingering absenteeism since the pandemic, and, for some, “the tidal wave they get outside of school [regarding] their political socialization and the related ability to think critically about the difference between information and propaganda.” If schools overcome these challenges, our discontents will fade.

 

         

                             Funny Business in School

 

One of the many joys of a school career is that students are often funny. During the first week of a new school year, I was a principal walking the halls just after the bell that started classes when I noticed two freshman girls hanging around a drinking fountain. I didn’t know them well but knew they weren’t troublesome but also weren’t stellar students, so I smiled and said, “Let’s go to class, ladies.” One of them said, “It’s only art class,” so I said, “Only art class? You get to learn about what’s beautiful!” The other instantly replied, “That’s cosmetology.”

Clever! Her quick wit left me speechless for a few heartbeats then I cracked up laughing so hard that tears ran down my face. She was pleased and they went to class. For the rest of the year, every time we passed in the halls, we couldn’t help but laugh, and we soon began chatting regularly. I told the story to her teachers who thought it as funny as I did. Whether they saw her in a new light, or she saw herself differently, or likely both, by year’s end, her grades had improved markedly. 

Another year, a group of freshman boys declared their lunch table an independent country. They had a flag they put on the table every day and elected officers including a secretary of state who conducted relations with foreigners like me. To speak with any of them, I had to arrange a summit meeting through the secretary. They kept this up for the whole year. 

When a guinea pig died after years as a science classroom mascot, bereaved students organized a funeral service in an enclosed courtyard. Wearing choir robes, thirty students walked slowly to the gravesite humming a good imitation of a Gregorian chant, the remains wrapped in a shroud and carried on a board. The guinea pig was laid to rest after a solemn ceremony recognizing its years of friendship. The whole thing was done to be funny but was also oddly touching. 

It was customary for football players to wear their jerseys to school on the first day of the season. Walking through a crowded hall between classes, a player came toward me wearing his number 82. I knew he was a good student with a sense of humor, so I pointed at him and cheerfully said, “I see they’ve issued those IQ shirts.” He stopped, looked down at his 82 for a moment then broke into a big grin and exclaimed “Yes!” while doing a fist pump. Very funny. (I never put much stock in IQs. As a colleague liked to say about school success, “It’s not the IQ. It's the ‘I will.’” 

After years as a principal, I missed teaching history and so took on a U.S. History night class at the Kansas City campus of DeVry Institute of Technology (now DeVry University). Arriving one night, I headed for the wide and graceful stairway that led directly to our second-floor classroom when I saw one of my students waiting for the elevator located next to the stairway. I waved to her saying, “Come on and take the stairs. It’s good for you and faster, too.” She stayed put and said, “This is an institute of technology and I plan to use all of it.” Good one, but I got to class first.

For graduates heading to college or those already there, consider a career in education. You can help make a better world, help students reach their potential, and have some fun along the way. It’s hard work but never routine and always worthwhile. Good teachers are in high demand. Be one. Change the world.